Ramblings on betterment and resentment

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Monthly Archives: September 2012

Thursday I am going do something I haven’t done in almost a year. I am about to step on to training mats at a MMA gym and take my first lesson in 10 months in Brazilian Ju-jitsu. I stopped due to having asthma but now I am feeling better and not getting young I am going slip on my trusty old blue gi and see where I get.

Hopefully I wont find it too hard after my hiatus and I was thinking if I didn’t take this break how good would I be by now? I can wallow in self pity like that or get of my arse and do something. I have chosen the latter.

But what was your passion that you have given up on? Why did you give it up? And even though your circumstances have changed why have you not got back in to it?

Nine times out of ten it is ; laziness. I am guilty of it too, if it wasn’t for the constant badgering from one of my friends/training partners I would be not getting on the mats either.

Find your passion again and find something that motivates you back in to it. Tv, radio, youtube , friends , family or even me and this blog. But your self in gear and step up. You aren’t getting any younger and the depression is getting worse isn’t it?

If you have lost your passion find it. If you can’t be bothered get motivated. We can take this approach in aspect of life. We can even use our passions to fuel us to get out of the crappy job cycle. If you stall get going again. Fish die if they stop moving and so do we.

What are you chasing? The correct answer should be happiness and that happiness shouldn’t be measure of wealth. It should be a measure of well being.

Money wise I do ok, I skirt around being middle class I don’t earn huge amounts but then again if I want a take-away I order one up or a new pair of shoes I go to Clarks. I’ve never been money motivated and am still not. The more I earn the more I get depressed. It is not some kind of social injustice switch in me, far from it. I am not sure what it is :

“I’ve been happy poor and miserable rich”

Think about that above quote. For me it’s true , now I am earning it doesn’t seem too great this having money lark. At school it’s an onslaught off “you must do well” , “get a good job” , “It’s no good being poor” and why is it not? Look at celebrities all the money in the world and they go off the rails. Because deep down they enter a form of melancholy that their money can’t buy them out of.

We can chase the next pay increase and what do we want after that? Another 5k and what do you sell for that? Deep down you know , you are selling your time. That time with your wife or your kids. When you are on your death bed from chasing the dream of money you will wish you didn’t spend the long cold nights in the office because ; Dave from accounts wanted you to do over time. No you will think “fuck if only I could have ten more minutes with my wife”. And all because you wanted money and not real happiness

Once we chase the money , we have sold-out we stop becoming us. Even if you have the things in life that makes you happy how much time do you get to do it? You work 40 hours a week and spend two playing guitar or whatever makes you happy. Is that a fair trade off? Of course not but you do it.

Find yourself a job that gives you the time to be happy. Or you will end up spending great swathes of time being depressed. Work to live don’t live to work. Chase the thing that makes you happy otherwise you are running the wrong way all your life.

Rule number one of life , is you are going to die. Accept that and you will find what to chase. Bentleys, big houses, the latest iphone , handbags or must have lipstick. Wont make you happy because if it did why do you buy the next one when it comes out? Chasing money turns people in to nasty horrible zombies. And you don’t want “Horrible zombie” on you tombstone

What makes you wealthy is not how much money you earn or your posessions it’s how few people call you a cunt during your life. And how happy you are.

Love of money is not the root of evil, but it can be the root of misery.

I was in Wood Green the other day. For those of you who don’t know what or where Wood Green is ; it is a large area of north London. Filled with £1 shops and a large mall that straddles the road. Deviate of the main strip and it becomes a warren of terrace housing and crime. Think of Vegas done of a budget of £1.50 and you get the idea.

The religious were out in force when I was down there. In front of this gleaming bastion of capitalism faith was heavily represented , all on a drive to attract followers.

If you are regular reader of the Markdini blog it might become apparent I am with out a region. To me no religion offers what we as human beings need : Freedom. Once we join a religion we become subservient to that religion and that’s not for me.

True freedom is a commodity that we are losing in the west. Certain parts of free-speech in the UK are being removed in case you upset a religious person. When we should have tighter controls on what the religious say. I am not one to jump up and down behind my copy of the Daily Mail and say the brown people are taking over, this would all be better with more Church of England churches. One they are not and two it wouldn’t.

But we are losing the right to offend people in the UK especially if you offend religion. Some parts of the world you can’t speak out about anything. This is why it so important to keep it in the west. Before it’s gone.

If you are a non-theist like myself the religious can hurl all sorts of insults

at you. “You will burn in hell” etc. But if you shout back “Leave them choir boys alone” they take offence. It has to be two way street after all what happened to all that “turn the other cheek” stuff?

Don’t be subservient to a religion. Be your own god as countless philosophers have taught us. Be nice to people, don’t be a cunt and enjoy life. Speak out when things are not fair and try not to kill anyone. You don’t need a book to be reminded of this or a place to go on Sunday. Most of us have this hard wired in to us already. Be strong don’t turn the other cheek if someone smites you. There are a lot of shitty people out there deal with them the best you can. That’s a real belief system.

You can believe what ever you want. You can call me anything you want for not following you. But don’t get offended when I call you names back. After all aren’t you suppose to turn the other cheek?

If we allow the UK to turn back in to a true religious country then we are all fucked. Remember Cromwell. Be your own god. Enjoy life. Do what you want to do and don’t impose your views on others.

Do you remember when you was in school? You was going to be something , wasn’t you? Did you make it? Are you doing something you hate, living a life you don’t want to?

The answer to the above is probably yes. But why ? Why didn’t we achieve them goals? I think for the most part it’s easy. We started with large goals and then made them smaller or moved them altogether.

The problem with most of us is we are lazy we have a put up with attitude. That’s why we get trapped in lives we don’t deserve. We might be heading for a goal and then something comes up , that is not exactly what we want but , we will take it as a stop gap. And then all your goals have moved and what you want has changed completely. We get hooked on the short-term and end up getting locked in on the long term.

Once we are locked in , it becomes a metaphoric prison. It’s hard to get out of after that. A this will do attitude, is what holds you back. Go for exactly what you want instead. Don’t make do, get where you want to be or need to be. It’s your life why put your self in prison?

Some people will tell you we need people to do manual labour , empty our bins and clean-up after us. Quite frankly these people who say such things are snobby middle-class cunts. If that is what people are happy with, then let them do it. What we need to do is remove the stigma or certain jobs and celebrate a work ethic.

If that’s your goal to be a cleaner then go for it. If your goal is to be a doctor then go for that. Go for your goals don’t let the smaller stop-gaps move you off what you want. Get where you need to be. You only live once don’t let your self spend it being depressed and never achieving what you want.

I like to juggle. I am not good at juggling and I can only juggle 3 balls , in a very basic pattern. But I like to juggle none the less. Juggling is a useless skill, for the most part, the idea of keeping 3 objects in the air doesn’t seem a useful skill at all.

Throwing 3 balls about may seem to others and maybe even you, a waste of time. I would agree it doesn’t achieve much. But it leads to a moment of connection. When you are throwing 3 balls up in to the air and catching each one there is a physical connection as well as mental connection.

There is a moment, a rhythm , a fading out of my surroundings and a thud of each ball as I catch it. This leads for me a me a Zen like moment. I am connected to everything and nothing at the same time. It is a strange concept to put in to words but that’s as best as I can describe it.

For this Zen moment I like to take at least 5 minutes of my day to connect. I get a sense of achievement and a mood bust all in one. Of course when I drop the balls I lose this connection, but I have got in to the moment enough to be “one” with what I am doing.

Now I am not going to tell you, juggle life will be great. It wont we both know that. But what I am saying is find you juggling. Be it , a performance art, martial arts, writing or anything else. Find that one thing, or two or even 3 that you can find your Zen moment in. Play with it and enjoy it. Then add a more difficult element to it and then you will find your moment again.

Do something you enjoy each day no matter how long your day as been. You are never too busy to improve yourself. Find that connection and take that buzz and use it for something you can channel it for.

A friend of mine said that to me the other day. I know where I am , but I am not sure where I am if that makes sense. Thinking about it and talking to another friend who has a certain neuroses in social situations, I then figured it out.

You need to find an outlet. If you imagine your mind as a water tank ; if you don’t turn the tap on and let the water come out, the water inside that tank become stagnant and starts to grow parasites. You need to flow and create something.

If you stagnate that’s when life gets to you and you worry about everything. Stop thinking about going forward and go forward. You can sit in a car all day and think it to move but it wont unless you put it gear and that is the same with life.

Go forward find your self and don’t stagnate. How long have you got on this earth really? If you think about how far you need to go forward with out moving you are going no where. Think of every year a mile to travel if you start travelling at 30 and you are 35 now you only have travelled 5 miles. But if you started at 20 and you are now 35 you have gone 15 miles.

Move your self. Don’t get bogged down and move forward. After all the number 1 rule of life is : one day you are going to die and that’s when you stop moving permanently